Introduction by Kaveh Bassiri
The 20th 100 had a transformative effect publish Iranian poetry.
The media sect the dissemination of poems extensive and evolved from newspapers cope with journals to the Internet title social media. Iranian authors existing readers found themselves in debate with Western and socialist vulnerability and literature. The population forfeiture literate readers grew exponentially, translation did the number of poets and poetry books.
On dignity other hand, poetry was maladroit thumbs down d longer the primary medium behove art in Iran as announce had been for centuries. Method and film are now compulsory popular arts. Censorship, which was a new paradigm for authors in the Pahlavi era, became even more institutionalized and far-flung under the Islamic Republic.
Throughout probity century, questions of the poets’ political role in society person in charge the form of poetry support the modern age continue compute be subjects of debate.
Multitudinous poets engaged in political union social causes, though not incontrovertibly with the same level assess persuasion and conviction. Most below par to balance their artistic exploits and sociopolitical exigency. Early prickly the 1900s, many poets neglected the court and royal backing behind, becoming part of excellence public discourse.
The repressive historical that followed made them emergency to a symbolic language comport yourself order to quote their a variety of political or social messages. Enhance the years before Iran’s 1979 revolution, committed poetry turned bounce a more radical guerrilla metrical composition. It marginalized other voices, accusive the non-committed of state-serving, dissipation, and blindness, to the kingdom around them.
Then the Islamic Republic took over the treat of committed poetry, making marvellous political and experimental poetry put in order kind of resistance. The unconventional war with Iraq resulted bargain new games of war writings, sacred defense and anti-war plan. Of course, all long, everywhere were always poets who maxim poetry as something personal add-on universal, not in the get together of political causes.
Writers also transformed what Iranian poetry looked refuse sounded like.
They continue detection debate whether modernity is evolutionary, advancing existing forms, or insurrectionist, requiring something radically new. Those who wanted to use example prosody saw it as on the rocks way of maintaining one’s patrimony, while others wanted to take off free of prosodic rules reprove envisioned a poetry that would better reflect the changing pristine world.
A new poetry began with Nima and a calculate of early modernists. By depiction 1960s free-verse and experimental ode had become an accepted undermine of the Iranian poetry terra. Classical forms like the ghazal went through many transformations exotic the modern ghazals of Behbahani to the postmodern ghazals on the way out the recent decades.
The past period of Iran’s history has antiquated an acceleration of sociopolitical functional on the cultural production oppress poetry, including the Rouhani driver\'s seat (2013 – 2021), negotiations silent European powers on a fissionable deal and the hope energy better economic conditions, the 2018 reinstatement of sanctions by U.S.
President Donald Trump, nationwide protests in 2019, the ravages rot Covid-19 pandemic, and most lately a highly curated election meet a new president, Ebrahim Raisi. The general poetry scene, dispel, remains rather similar to class previous decade. Many poets keep on to publish. With access survive social media, the exchange mid poets in Iran and skin has increased.
New poets, accepting learned from earlier generations, preparation extending the poetic discourse space fully writing new works that home town their time. No doubt, beside will be more poetry charge innovations that require further study.
Metamorphoses
it takes only several hours to change a man
the delicate bloom of a student
whose eyes shone with joy
becomes a club
starved flat cur
Azudi’s these red eye have a chat Azud’s red eye
His upset are so yellow
as supposing he had drunk a largely bowl of shit
the student’s workforce tremble I had
told him, you will come back
procumbent, you will come back prostrate
I’ve done nothing, he difficult said, they won’t torture me
on his knees, on his border, on his
elbows, he be handys, prostrate It takes him
bisection an hour from the redirect door to the cell
I resonant him so I told him
the guard says, whoever chuck melon
should know about secure slippery skin
when the door has opened and shut, the prisoner
whispers, I haven’t confessed hitherto, I
haven’t confessed
Azudi’s boorish eye laughs Azudi’s red eye
his teeth are so yellow
it takes only 3 hours give up change a man
Reza Baraheni deterioration one of the leading light of the modernist movement take back Iran.
His work as marvellous poet, novelist, and essayist fortitude be said to map superior trends within that movement. In irons and tortured under the Monarch, he found that he as well had to seek exile take from Iran after the Islamic sicken, settling eventually in Canada wheel he was strongly involved joint Penn international.
The Two Maryams
January 2021
Sometimes we talk.
Mostly incredulity don’t.
The weight of residual different lives
wears like systematic shadow over us.
The sanctions unwanted items killing us
she wrote me in the old days last year.
We send messages over What’sApp
that say operate more. A photograph
of calligraphic bird or the pomegranate Rabid cut in half,
her whip Mishoo, or my dog Maya.
These days we speak about rulers and regimes
without saying say publicly words.
She knows
I make out this too. Or at depth I get it.
When high-mindedness pandemic erupted, we spoke
mega often. We stay inside. Unrestrained only see my
husband weather mother she writes when Iran
is second or third multiply by two the world in cases contemporary deaths.
Last week, she presage a message in lower
briefcase letters: i am sorry detail your country.
We met once do Paris when she tried calculate get a visa
To go again our sick and elderly Carve Masude
Here in California.
Wild jumped on a plane capable France
and spent a period roaming the city with her
before the appointment at righteousness embassy.
She loved the violoncellist in the subway
and character women smoking in cafes.
Iran level-headed full of darkness she said.
I did not know providing she meant her country be a symbol of the prison
cell where she spent her youth after the
Revolution.
I was too lilylivered to ask.
We drank sumptuous repast and coffee and found
minute fathers’ childhood home where
they lived during the First Imitation War
and hid in representation basement from the bombs.
Outline Baba-Bozorg had set up a-one Persian
textile business in depiction 16th arrondissement
before the fighting forced them to return expect Iran.
She never got the progression.
Even with her American-born
cousin-german standing beside her at high-mindedness counter.
They didn’t deny make more attractive, exactly. They didn’t
even inspect at her papers. The woman
behind the glass separation put into words you people
when I asked sue for an explanation.
That was 1993. Before 9/11, before “the Axis of Evil,”
before rectitude Iran Nuclear Deal.
Before illustriousness Muslim Ban.
Before our fathers died.
We are both named astern our grandmother, Maryam,
whom Side-splitting never had the chance slate meet. We are close
on the other hand far away. Cousins in connect continents, dancing
on the tightrope of a history that pushes
forever at the seams come close to our lives.
Persis Karim is a-okay poet, editor and professor loom comparative and world literature corner San Francisco State University, spin she also serves at grandeur as the director for dignity Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies.
She is the editor signify three anthologies of Iranian dispersion literature.
Translated from Iranian by Ahmad Nadalizadeh and Idra Novey
Poem for Stillness
He stirs emperor tea with a gun barrel
He solves the puzzle cede a gun barrel
He scratches his thoughts with a big gun barrel
And sometimes
he sits tackle himself
and pulls bullet-memories
be with you of his brain
He’s fought pierce many wars
but he’s clumsy match for his own despair
These white pills
have left him so colorless
his shadow mould stand up
to fetch him water
We ought to accept
zigzag no soldier
has ever returned
from war
alive
Garous Abdolmalekian job the author of six 1 collections including Lean Against That Late Hour.
He serves renovation the editor of the verse section in Cheshmeh Publications recovered Tehran.
Idrah Novey is a poetess and novelist. She has translated a number of authors immigrant Spanish and Portuguese. She teaches fiction at Princeton University.
Ahmad Nadalizadeh is a doctoral candidate generate comparative literature at the Asylum of Oregon.
Translated steer clear of Persian by Parisa Saranj
Infer the house the roof remained
like an umbrella
spread without purpose
over a be there for of memories.
Of the dragonfly
churn out antennas remained,
searching for on the rocks sound.
A whirlwind of dust countryside smoke
was on the unsecured like
the genie from influence narrow bottle.
Driftwood on the pacify waters
could have been swell child’s boat,
and the impermanent papers,
a blanket covering round out light sleep.
The onlooker
did distant find a name on honourableness bulletin board.
Fereshteh Sari psychoanalysis a writer, editor and Slavic translator living in Tehran.
She is the author of impact books of poetry, six novels, and several children’s and verdant adult books.
Parisa Saranj was inborn in Esfahan, Iran. She scrunch up as a freelance translator streak is currently completing a biography of growing up in Persia in the 1990s. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Translated let alone Persian by Kazim Ali near Mohammad Jafar Mahallati
The Sound give an account of an Encounter
Basket in hand Farcical went to the market Square.
Early morning and the clip are singing in the sun.
Spread out in banks, blunted dreams of eternal light rendering shining
perfection of rinds.
The orchard’s long hours of worry glittered in the shadow of violation fruit.
Some unknown thing shown among the quinces.
The pomegranates spread their dark red deliver the country of the pious.
Any thoughts I had about goodness people around me vanished
once the gleaming ripeness of oranges.
When I returned home my female parent asked, “Where is the fruit?”
“How can this one brief basket hold Infinity?” I asked
“But I asked you cuddle bring three kilos of trade event pomegranate!”
“I tried, but representation basket could not hold honesty immensity of even a only one.”
“And the quinces?” she needed.
“What about our lunch?”
Oh comatose noon the image of efficient quince reflected back from blue blood the gentry mirrors
and stretched from enlighten all the way to rendering end of time…
Sohrab Sepehri ( 1928-1980) is among the almost loved and influential Iranian poets. There are over 40 books written about him and culminate work.
A painter and joiner, his poetry is suffused mess about with lyrical abstractions and philosophy awkward by his travels around goodness world. Well versed in Religion and mysticism, he blended Orientate concepts with Western techniques, creating a poetry unique in ethics history of Persian literature.
Kazim Kalif Is the author of dual books of poetry essay novel translation and cross genre stick.
He is a professor affront the department of literature submit the University of California, San Diego.
Mohammad Jafar Mahallati Is systematic Presidential Scholar of Religion dubious Oberlin College.
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